Sign up to myfitnesspal and get the app on your phone.

Put in your height, weight, age etc as well as your goal, and the speed at which you want to lose weight. Then you have to think how hard do you want to go? The quicker you lose the weight the more of it will be muscle, as well as it generally being more difficult mentally because you will always be hungry and maybe even low energy if you're doing a serious cut. If you log your weight at least a few times a week - I'd recommend weighing yourself first thing in the morning so you have a consistent measure in terms of water weight, food in your body etc - then you'll be able to have a very good handle on the situation.

A strategy to improve your diet is to modify the quantities of the foods you eat while eating the same meals. For example if you eat (MEAT), (CARB SOURCE), vegetables as a meal you can reduce your carb by a little bit and increase your meat and vegetables. Then you get more protein and micronutrients, you'll be more full and less or equal calories while you haven't had to cut anything out of your diet or something so it's easy to stick to. You still get to eat fries, pasta etc just eat a bit less of it while eating the same size meal. Obviously at the very least you want to remove as much processed foods as possible, try to eat as close to whole foods, paleo etc type diet as possible as you will get more nutrient bang for your buck while avoiding potential stuff with additives, microplastics etc which seem to be all the rage nowadays, I think that's massively exaggerated but processed food is just high calorie, zero nutrition junk even without conspiracies about phytoestrogens that are going to turn you into a tranny.

Another thing you can do is drink plain black coffee (no sugar or milk) in the mornings to suppress your appetite while you do intermittent fasting. A trick that can help you with maintaining your cutting diet, if you choose to be quite strict with restricting certain foods etc, is to have a milestone based cheat meal/refeed system. IE if you hit a new weight for the first time this week then you're allowed a cheat meal for the weekend, with the milestones being spaced at your discretion. I would try to make them about fortnightly though, so if your aim is to lose 1 pound per week then set the milestones at 2lbs, so when you hit 218 for the first time you're allowed a cheat meal, then 216 etc with each number only being possible to be redeemed once which will keep you locked in trying to always hit the new milestone because if you fuck up for a couple weeks it'll take a long time to get back to the next milestone.

It's kinda pointless to lose weight and end up just being skinny or skinny fat, the most important thing if you want to actually look good is to be on a good training program at the gym. You should post what your current program is, how many days per week you are willing to train etc and I'll see if there's improvements I can make that will give you better results in the same amount of gym time.

Try to just increase your general activity, if you have a step tracker try to increase your daily steps by a thousand or something per day. Go for a 10-15 minute walk after every time you eat, if you eat at work go for a walk instead of sitting in the building or car waiting to go back to work. If you have them, take your dogs out more often etc. Just small things that aren't really big deals on their own but increase your daily calorie expenditure a little bit, help you get more sunlight, and just generally make you happier because you get to be moving around rather than sedentary.